‘I Was Hurting Other People’

A standup comic who was just coming off a whole new level of success and critical acclaim for his FX series Louie, C.K. found himself one of the more prominent celebrities in the crosshairs of the #MeToo movement, when the social reckoning for men abusing their power came for him in 2017.

After he was accused of several instances of sexual misconduct by multiple women in a New York Times article that year, the comedian came clean and admitted that the allegations against him were true. As a result, his film I Love You, Daddy was pulled from distribution, though his standup career would controversially continue. He even won a Grammy for his first stand-up show released after the controversy, 2020’s Sincerely Louis C.K.

While he addressed the “accurate accusations” in that special, C.K. said on Friday’s This Past Weekend podcast with host Theo Von, as covered by TheWrap and Mediaite, that it took him many more years to fully unpack and come to terms with his own behaviors at the time.

He also spoke about how despite everything, it actually felt freeing after those five women came forward with their truths about him. “You’re trying to piece together that broken mirror and cutting your fingers, that’s beautiful. It’s true, and when life f–ks it up for you, when it gets torn up, it’s a relief,” he explained.

“That’s why I felt free, you know?” the comedian continued. “Because I had tried to manage these problems I had inside of me for so many years, and I tried to feel like I was like a normal person, or that I was what I thought of as a good person. But I was doing s–t in the background of my life that I was ashamed of. I was hurting other people and trying to tell myself I wasn’t.”

He talked about the long internal process he went through to fully understand the wrongness of his own behavior, beginning with his statement in 2017 when he said, in part, “These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my d–k without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your d–k isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them.”

C.K. explained to Von, “You know, those things on the edge, like using another person, but you got their permission first, you’re still using another person. You’re not being with them, you’re using them.”

“That took me a long time to learn about that stuff,” he continued. “But when you’re doing that stuff and creating more and more problems, they just keep getting bigger and bigger.”

On top of that, he said that he was struggling internally with how well things were going in his life and career while carrying this internal awareness of his own behavior. He explained that he was feeling an “incredible rift between way you’re representing yourself and who you really are.”

In looking back at himself then, C.K. speculated he was, in a way, trying to out himself. “I think some of the early versions of talking on stage really honestly were me trying to get out and say I’m corrupt, I want everybody to know it. Right, I’m a corrupt file,” he explained.

You can see Louis C.K.’s full discussion with Theo Von in the video above. His debut novel Ingram is described as a novel about a young drifter in rural America “coming of age in an indifferent world.” The book is set for release on November 11.